Columbine birdsong (I saw the world as through a glass, as it lies eternally)

May 12. 

As the bay-wing sang 

many thousand years ago

so sang he to-night. 

A brother poet

this small gray bird (or bard)

whose muse inspires mine. 

One with the rocks and with us.

To be inspired  

a thousand years hence – 

be in harmony to-day.

May 12, 1857

(avesong)

See Walden (“I heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not forget for many a thousand more”); May 23, 1841 ("All nature is a new impression every instant”); August 19, 1851("Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other. If you are not out at the right instant, the summer may go by and you not see it.”);  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world.; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I am a rock

My photos from this time of year show the columbine is already out (in some profusion at that ledge near the view) but I haven’t seen any this year. I asked Jane at the view last night and she speaks of the dryness but says she’s noticed one somewhere near the house.  This morning I’m reading Henry‘s account of becoming aware, while otherwise engaged in some sort of work, of the immortal song of the bay wing sparrow -- how it transports him and how a good part of the experience is the reminiscence that the birdsong brings of farmhouses and summer days and sunsets, and how in order to have this experience “1000 years hence”-- this reminiscence and spark of inspiration -- one must be in the moment now.  

Musing about all this now walking the dog, I unexpectedly see one ragged little columbine near the path and it brings back a flood of childhood memories when I first discovered this flower and how I felt at the time it was so much a part of me and my summers. This moment now. This columbine by the path-side.

zphx 20220512

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022

A parti-colored warbler within a few feet of me.

May 12

Dug up to-day the red-brown dor-bugs. 

My red oak acorns have sent down long radicles underground. 

A parti-colored warbler hangs dead downward like a goldfinch on our gooseberries, within a few feet of me, apparently about the blossoms.

Sylvia Americana [or "parti-colored warbler,”]:
J J. Audubon's blue yellow-backed warbler,
now Northern Parula warbler (Setophaga americana )

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 12, 1859

Dug up to-day the red-brown dor-bugs. See April 27, 1857 (“I dig up those reddish-brown dor-bugs in the garden. They stir a little.”)

A parti-colored warbler within a few feet of me. See May 12, 1857 (“ Hear the screep of the parti-colored warbler ”)  See also May 4, 1858 (“Heard the tweezer note, or screeper note, of the particolored warbler, bluish above, yellow or orange throat and breast, white vent, and white on wings, neck above yellowish, going restlessly over the trees. ”); May  9, 1853 ("  Saw on Mr. Emerson's firs several parti-colored warblers or finch creepers (Sylvia Americana) a small blue and yellow bird somewhat like but smaller than the indigo-bird; quite tame about the buds of the firs now showing red; often head downward."); May 9, 1858 (“The parti-colored warbler . . .— my tweezer-bird, – making the screep screep screep note. It is an almost incessant singer . . . utters its humble notes, like ah twze twze twze, or ah twze twze twze twze.”); and A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the parti-colored warbler (Sylvia Americana)

They use this wood for coffins.

May 12. 

May 12, 2018

Chimney swallows. 

P. M. – Up Assabet. - 

On the 8th I noticed a little pickerel recently dead in the river with a slit in its upper lip three quarters of an inch long, apparently where a hook had pulled out. There was a white fuzzy swelling at the end of the snout accordingly, and this apparently had killed it. 

It rained last night, and now I see the elm seed or samarae generally fallen or falling. It not only strews the street but the surface of the river, floating off in green patches to plant other shores. The rain evidently hastened its fall. 

This must be the earliest of trees and shrubs to go to seed or drop its seed. The white maple keys have not fallen. The elm seed floats off down the stream and over the meadows, and thus these trees are found bordering on the stream. 

By the way, I notice that birches near meadows, where there is an exceedingly gentle inclination, grow in more or less parallel lines a foot or two apart, parallel with the shore, apparently the seed having been dropped there either by a freshet or else lodged in the parallel waving hollows of the snow. 

It clears off in the forenoon and promises to be warm in the afternoon, though it at last becomes cool. 

I see now, as I go forth on the river, the first summer shower coming up in the northwest, a dark and well defined cloud with rain falling sheaf-like from it, but fortunately moving off northeast along the horizon, or down the river. The peculiarity seems to be that the sky is not generally overcast, but elsewhere, south and northeast, is a fair-weather sky with only innocent cumuli, etc., in it. 

The thunder-cloud is like the ovary of a perfect flower. Other showers are merely staminiferous or barren. There are twenty barren to one fertile. It is not commonly till thus late in the season that the fertile are seen. In the thunder-cloud, so distinct and condensed, there is a positive energy, and I notice the first as the bursting of the pollen-cells in the flower of the sky. 

Waded through the west-of-rock, or Wheeler, meadow," but I find no frog-spawn there!! I do not even notice tadpoles. Beside that those places are now half full of grass, some pools where was spawn are about dried up (!), as that in Stow's land by railroad. Where are the tadpoles? 

There is much less water there than a month ago. Where, then, do the Rana palustris lay their spawn? I think in the river, because it is there I hear them, but I cannot see any. Perhaps they choose pretty deep water, now it is so warm. 

Now and for a week I have noticed a few pads with wrinkled edges blown up by the wind. 

Already the coarse grass along the meadow shore, or where it is wettest, is a luxuriant green, answering in its deep, dark color to the thunder-cloud, – both summer phenomena, – as if it too had some lightning in its bosom. 

Some early brakes at the Island woods are a foot high and already spread three or four inches. 

The Polygonatum pubescens is strongly budded. 

The Salix lucida above Assabet Spring will not open for several days. 

The early form of the cinquefoil is now apparently in prime and very pretty, spotting the banks with its clear bright yellow. 

See apparently young toad tadpoles now, -- judging from their blackness, -- now quite free from the eggs or spawn. If I remember rightly, the toad is colored and spotted more like a frog at this season when it is found in the water. 

Observed an Emys insculpta, as often before, with the rear edge on one side of its shell broken off for a couple of inches, as if nibbled by some animal. Do not foxes or musquash do this? In this case the under jaw was quite nervy. 

Found a large water adder by the edge of Farmer’s large mud-hole, which abounds with tadpoles and frogs, on which probably it was feeding. It was sunning on the bank and would face me and dart its head toward me when I tried to drive it from the water. It is barred above, but indistinctly when out of water, so that it then appears almost uniformly dark-brown, but in the water broad reddish-brown bars are seen, very distinctly alternating with very dark brown ones. 

The head was very flat and suddenly broader than the neck behind. Beneath it was whitish and red dish flesh-color.  It was about two inches in diameter at the thickest part. They are the biggest and most formidable-looking snakes that we have. The inside of its mouth and throat was pink. It was awful to see it wind along the bottom of the ditch at last, raising wreaths of mud, amid the tadpoles, to which it must be a very sea-serpent. 

I afterward saw another running under Sam Barrett’s grist-mill the same after noon. He said that he saw a water snake, which he distinguished from a black snake, in an apple tree near by, last year, with a young robin in its mouth, having taken it from the nest. There was a cleft or fork in the tree which enabled it to ascend. 

Find the Viola Muhlenbergii abundantly out (how long?), in the meadow southwest of Farmer's Spring. 

The cinnamon and interrupted ferns are both about two feet high in some places. The first is more uniformly woolly down the stem, the other, though very woolly at top, being partly bare on the stem. The wool of the last is coarser. 

George, the carpenter, says that he used to see a great many stone-heaps in the Saco in Bartlett, near the White Mountains, like those in the Assabet, and that there were no lampreys there and they called them “snake-heaps.” 

Saw some unusually broad chestnut planks, just sawed, at the mill. Barrett said that they came from Lincoln; whereupon I said that I guessed I knew where they came from, judging by their size alone, and it turned out that I was right. I had often gathered the nuts of those very trees and had observed within a year that they were cut down. 

So it appears that we have come to this, that if I see any peculiarly large chestnuts at the sawmill, I can guess where they came from, even know them in the log. These planks were quite shaky, and the heart had fallen out of one. Barrett said that it was apt to be the case with large chestnut. 

They use this wood for coffins, instead of black walnut.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 12, 1858

George, the carpenter, says that he used to see a great many stone-heaps in the Saco and that there were no lampreys there and they called them “snake-heaps.” See May 8, 1858 ("Mr. Wright , an old fisherman, thinks the stone-heaps are not made by lamprey. May 4, 1858 ("I asked [a fisherman] if he knew what fish made the stone-heaps in the river. He said the lamprey eel.”)

Find the Viola Muhlenbergii abundantly out (how long?), in the meadow southwest of Farmer's Spring. See May 22, 1856 ("Viola Muhlenbergii is abundantly out; how long?"); May 16, 1857 ("Viola Muhlenbergii abundantly out, how long?”)

One with the rocks and with me – I saw the world as through a glass, eternally.

May 12

May 12. 

How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We live according to rule. Some men are bedridden; all, world-ridden. 

I take my neighbor, an intellectual man, out into the woods and invite him to take a new and absolute view of things, to empty clean out of his thoughts all institutions of men and start again; but he can't do it, he sticks to his traditions and his crotchets. He thinks that governments, colleges, newspapers, etc., are from everlasting to everlasting. 

The Salix cordata var. Torreyana is distinguished by its naked ovaries more or less red-brown, with flesh- colored stigmas, with a distinct slender woolly rachis and conspicuous stalks, giving the ament a loose and open appearance. 

When I consider how many species of willow have been planted along the railroad causeway within ten years, of which no one knows the history, and not one in Concord beside myself can tell the name of one, so that it is quite a discovery to identify a single one in a year, and yet within this period the seeds of all these kinds have been conveyed from some other locality to this, I am reminded how much is going on that man wots not of. 

May 12, 2017

*****

While dropping beans in the garden at Texas just after sundown (May 13th), I hear from across the fields the note of the bay-wing, Come here here there there quick quick quick or I'm gone (which I have no doubt sits on some fence-post or rail there), and it instantly translates me from the sphere of my work and repairs all the world that we jointly inhabit. 

It reminds me of so many country afternoons and evenings when this bird's strain was heard far over the fields, as I pursued it from field to field. 

The spirit of its earth-song, of its serene and true philosophy, was breathed into me, and I saw the world as through a glass, as it lies eternally. 

Some of its aboriginal contentment, even of its domestic felicity, possessed me. What he suggests is permanently true. 

As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years ago, so sang he to-night. In the beginning God heard his song and pronounced it good, and hence it has endured. 

It reminded me of many a summer sunset, of many miles of gray rails, of many a rambling pasture, of the farmhouse far in the fields, its milk-pans and well-sweep, and the cows coming home from pasture. 

I would thus from time to time take advice of the birds, correct my human views by listening to their volucral (?). 

He is a brother poet, this small gray bird (or bard), whose muse inspires mine. His lay is an idyl or pastoral, older and sweeter than any that is classic. He sits on some gray perch like himself, on a stake, perchance, in the midst of the field, and you can hardly see him against the plowed ground. You advance step by step as the twilight deepens, and lo! he is gone, and in vain you strain your eyes to see whither, but anon his tinkling strain is heard from some other quarter. 

One with the rocks and with us. 

Methinks I hear these sounds, have these reminiscences, only when well employed, at any rate only when I have no reason to be ashamed of my employment. I am often aware of a certain compensation of this kind for doing something from a sense of duty, even unconsciously. 

Our past experience is a never-failing capital which can never be alienated, of which each kindred future event reminds us. 

If you would have the song of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let your life be in harmony with its strain to-day. 

I ordinarily plod along a sort of whitewashed prison entry, subject to some indifferent or even grovelling mood. I do not distinctly realize my destiny. I have turned down my light to the merest glimmer and am doing some task which I have set myself. I take incredibly narrow views, live on the limits, and have no recollection of absolute truth. Mushroom institutions hedge me in. 

But suddenly, in some fortunate moment, the voice of eternal wisdom reaches me even, in the strain of the sparrow, and liberates me, whets and clarifies my senses, makes me a competent witness. 

*****

The second amelanchier out, in garden. Some fir balsams, as Cheney's. Is not ours in the grove, with the chip-bird's nest in it, the Abies Fraseri? Its cones are short. I hear of, and also find, a ground-bird's (song sparrow's) nest with five eggs. 

P. M. — To Miles Swamp, Conantum. I hear a yorrick, apparently anxious, near me, utter from time to time a sharp grating char-r-r, like a fine watchman's rattle. As usual, I have not heard them sing yet. 

A night-warbler, plainly light beneath. It always flies to a new perch immediately after its song. 

Hear the screep of the parti-colored warbler. 

Veronica serpyllifolia is abundantly out at Corner Spring. 

As I go along the hillside toward Miles Swamp, I mistake the very light gray cliff-sides east of the river at Bittern Cliff for amelanchier in bloom. 

The brother of Edward Garfield (after dandelions!) tells me that two years ago, when he was cutting wood at Bittern Cliff in the winter, he saw something dark squatting on the ice, which he took to be a mink, and taking a stake he went to inspect it. It turned out to be a bird, a new kind of duck, with a long, slender, pointed bill (he thought red). It moved off backwards, hissing at him, and he threw his stake about a rod and partly broke its neck, then killed it. It was very lean and the river was nowhere open. He sent it to Waltham and sold it for twenty-five cents.

Black ash, maybe a day. Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum.

I see a whitish cocoon on a small carpinus. It is artfully made where there is a short crook in the main stem, so as to just fill the hollow and make an even surface, the stick forming one side.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 12, 1857

When I consider how many species of willow have been planted along the railroad causeway within ten years, of which no one knows the history. See April 9, 1853 ("The more I study willows, the more I am confused. ") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Salix cordata (heartleaf willow); A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway.

Methinks I hear these sounds, have these reminiscences, only when well employed. . . See November 18 1851 ("The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work."); April 12, 1854 ("I observe that it is when I have been intently, and it may be laboriously, at work . . . that the muse visits me, and I see or hear beauty. It is from out the shadow of my toil that I look into the light.”); April 30, 1856 (“Surveying seemed a noble employment which brought me within hearing of this bird. I was trying to get the exact course of a wall thickly beset with shrub oaks and birches, making an opening through them with axe and knife, while the hillside seemed to quiver or pulsate with the sudden melody. Again, it is with the side of the ear that you hear. The music or the beauty belong not to your work itself but some of its accompaniments. You would fain devote yourself to the melody, but you will hear more of it if you devote yourself to your work.”); See also December 8, 1859 ("Only the poet has the faculty to see present things as if also past and future, as if universally significant.”)

As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years ago, so sang he to-night. If you would have the song of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let your life be in harmony with its strain to-day. Compare Walden (“I heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not forget for many a thousand more”);

See  June 23, 1856. ("Bay-wings sang morning and evening . . . Its note somewhat like Come, here here, there there, —— quick quick quick (fast), — or I m gone. "); May 14, 1858 ("As I go down the railroad at evening, I hear the incessant evening song of the bay-wing from far over the fields. It suggests pleasant associations. Are they not heard chiefly at this season?")

If you would have the song of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let your life be in harmony with its strain to-day. See Wordsworth;s Tintern Abbey:

, , , While here I stand, not only with the sense

Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts

That in this moment there is life and food

For future years.,

and  February 13, 1859 ("A transient acquaintance with any phenomenon is not sufficient to make it completely the subject of your muse. You must be so conversant with it as to remember it and be reminded of it long afterward, while it lies remotely fair and elysian in the horizon, approachable only by the imagination.")

A night-warbler, plainly light beneath. It always flies to a new perch immediately after its song. According to Emerson, the night warbler was "a bird he had never identified, had been in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush.” See May 17, 1858 ("Just after hearing my night-warbler I see two birds on a tree. ...[One perhaps golden-crowned thrush. ]”); May 19, 1858 (“Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird! I have noticed that when it drops down into the woods it darts suddenly one side to a perch when low."); May 28, 1854 ("The night-warbler, after his strain, drops down almost perpendicularly into a tree-top and is lost.”) 

Suddenly, in some fortunate moment, the voice of eternal wisdom reaches me . . . and liberates me, whets and clarifies my senses, makes me a competent witness.") See January 11, 1857("I become a witness with unprejudiced senses to the order of the universe."); See also December 23, 1851 ("I see that there is to be a fine, clear sunset, and make myself a seat in the snow on the Cliff to witness it.")

As the bay-wing sang 

many thousand years ago

so sang he to-night. 

A brother poet 

one with the rocks and with me – 

whose muse inspires mine.

To be inspired  

a thousand years hence – be in 

harmony to-day.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  One with the rocks and with me

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-570517  

A Book of the Seasons: May 12

May 12.

As the bay-wing sang 

many thousand years ago

so sang he to-night. 

A brother poet, 

one with the rocks and with me, 

whose muse inspires mine. 

May 12, 1857

May 12, 2017

Very heavy dew and mist this morning. The earth is so dry it drinks like a sponge. May 12, 1860

Very hot. 2.30 P. M. — 81°. We seek the shade to sit in for a day or two.  May 12, 1860

The sudden heat compels us to sit in the shade at the bars above Puffer's, whence we hear the first bobolink. May 12, 1856

How much life the note of the bobolink imparts to the meadow! May 12, 1856 

First bathe in the river. Quite warm enough. , May 12, 1860

I see now, as I go forth on the river, the first summer shower coming up in the northwest, a dark and well defined cloud with rain falling sheaf-like from it, . . . but elsewhere, south and northeast, is a fair-weather sky with only innocent cumuli. Journal, May 12, 1858

How suddenly the birds arrive after the storm, — even yesterday before it was fairly over, —as if they had foreseen its end! May 12, 1856

It rained last night, and now I see the elm seed or samarae generally fallen or falling., This must be the earliest of trees and shrubs to go to seed or drop its seed. The elm seed floats off down the stream and over the meadows, and thus these trees are found bordering on the stream. May 12, 1858

The sugar maple blossoms on the Common resound with bees. Journal, May 12, 1860

I perceive the fragrance of the Salix alba, now in bloom, more than an eighth of a mile distant. They now adorn the causeways with their yellow blossoms and resound with the hum of bumblebees. May 12, 1855

When I consider how many species of willow have been planted along the railroad causeway within ten years, of which no one knows the history, and not one in Concord beside myself can tell the name of one, so that it is quite a discovery to identify a single one in a year, and yet within this period the seeds of all these kinds have been conveyed from some other locality to this, I am reminded how much is going on that man wots not of.  May 12, 1857

Our past experience is a never-failing capital which can never be alienated, of which each kindred future event reminds us. If you would have the song of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let your life be in harmony with its strain to-day.  May 12, 1857

I hear from across the fields the note of the bay-wing, Come here here there there quick quick quick or I'm gone (which I have no doubt sits on some fence-post or rail there), and it instantly translates me from the sphere of my work and repairs all the world that we jointly inhabit. It reminds me of so many country afternoons and evenings when this bird's strain was heard far over the fields, as I pursued it from field to field. . . . As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years ago, so sang he to-night. May 12, 1857

May 12, 2013

Passing on into the Miles meadow, am struck by the interesting tender green of the just springing foliage of the aspens, apples, cherries (more reddish), etc. It is now especially interesting while you can see through it. May 12, 1855

One flower of the Polygonatum pubescent open there [under Lee’s Cliff]; probably may shed pollen to-morrow. May 12, 1855

The sweet-gale begins to leaf  May 12, 1855 

 The red oak there leafed a day or two, or one day earlier than hickory. May 12, 1855 

My red oak acorns have sent down long radicles underground.  May 12, 1859 

I now begin to distinguish where at a distance the Amelanchier Botryapium, with its white against the russet, is waving in the wind. May 12, 1855

Under Lee’s Cliff, about one rod east of the ash, am surprised to find some pale-yellow columbines, — not a tinge of scarlet, —the leaves and stem also not purplish, but a yellowish and light green, with leaves differently shaped from the common, the parts, both flower and leaves, more slender, and the leaves not so flat, but inclining to fold. May 12, 1855

The cinnamon and interrupted ferns are both about two feet high in some places. The first is more uniformly woolly down the stem, the other, though very woolly at top, being partly bare on the stem. The wool of the last is coarser. May 12, 1858

Watch a black and white creeper from Bittern Cliff, a very neat and active bird, exploring the limbs on all sides and looking three or four ways almost at once for insects. Now and then it raises its head a little, opens its bill, and, without closing it, utters its faint seeser seeser seeser. May 12, 1855

Hear the screep of the parti-colored warbler May 12, 1857

A parti-colored warbler hangs dead downward like a goldfinch on our gooseberries, within a few feet of me, apparently about the blossoms. Journal, May 12, 1859

The brown thrasher is a powerful singer; he is a quarter of a mile off across the river, when he sounded within fifteen rods. May 12, 1855

Hear an oven-bird. May 12, 1855

I have found half a dozen robins’ nests with eggs already, —one in an elm, two in a Salix alba, one in a Salix nigra, one in a pitch pine, etc., etc. Journal, May 12, 1855

From beyond the orchard see a large bird far over the Cliff Hill, which, with my glass, I soon make out to be a fish hawk advancing. . . .. It comes on steadily, bent on fishing, with long and heavy undulating wings, with an easy, sauntering flight, over the river to the pond, and hovers over Pleasant Meadow a long time, hovering from time to time in one spot, when more than a hundred feet high, then making a very short circle or two and hovering again, then sauntering off against the wood side. A. . .When just below Bittern Cliff, I observe by its motions that it observes something. It makes a broad circle of observation in its course, lowering itself somewhat; then, by one or two steep sidewise flights, it reaches the water, and, as near as intervening trees would let me see, skims over it and endeavored to clutch its prey in passing. May 12, 1855

We sit about half an hour, and it is surprising what various distinct sounds we hear there deep in the wood, as if the aisles of the wood were so many ear trumpets,-- the cawing of crows, the peeping of hylas in the swamp and perhaps the croaking of a tree-toad, the oven-bird, the yorrick of Wilson’s thrush, a distant stake-driver, the night-warbler and black and white creeper, the lowing of cows, the late supper horn, the voices of boys, the singing of girls, -- not all together but separately, distinctly, and musically, from where the partridge and the red-tailed hawk and the screech owl sit on their nests. May 12, 1855

Sounds of the deep wood

where red-tailed hawk, partridge and

owl sit on their nests. 

May 12, 1855

A glorious day. May 12, 1856

May 12, 2014

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

  May 11 <<<<<<<<  May 12  >>>>>>>>  May 13

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May 12

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024 

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-May-12

How much life the note of the bobolink imparts to the meadow!

May 12. A glorious day. 

May 12. A glorious day. 

P. M. —Walked round by Dennis’s and Hollowell place with Alcott. 

It is suddenly very warm. A washing day, with a slight haze accompanying the strong, warm wind. 

I see, in the road beyond Luther Hosmer’s, in different places, two bank swallows which were undoubtedly killed by the four days’ northeast rain we have just had. Puffer says he has seen two or three dead sparrows also. 

The sudden heat compels us to sit in the shade at the bars above Puffer's, whence we hear the first bobolink. 

How suddenly the birds arrive after the storm, — even yesterday before it was fairly over, —as if they had foreseen its end! How much life the note of the bobolink imparts to the meadow! 

I see a cultivated cherry in bloom, and Prichard’s Canada plum will probably bloom to-morrow. 

The river is higher than yesterday, about the same as when highest before this spring, and goes no higher. Thus attains its height the day after the rain.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 12, 1856

We hear the first bobolink. . . .See May 6, 1857 ("While at work I hear the bobolink .”); May 13, 1855 ("As we float down the river through the still and hazy air, enjoying the June-like warmth, . . . the sound of the first bobolink floats to us from over the meadows. . .");  May 10, 1853 ("lt at once a strain that sounds like old times and recalls a hundred associations. Not at once do I remember that a year has elapsed since I heard it, and then the idea of the bobolink is formed in my mind. . . It is remarkable that I saw this morning for the first time the bobolink, gold robin, and kingbird, - and have since heard the first two in various parts of the town and am satisfied that they have just come.”); May 16, 1854 ("The earth is all fragrant as one flower. And bobolinks tinkle in the air. Nature now is perfectly genial to man.”).

Sounds of the deep woods at sunset.

May 12

May 12











Cold enough for a fire this many a day. 

6 A. M. — To Hill.

I hear the myrtle-bird’s  te-e-e, te-e-e, t t t, t t t, clear flute-like whistle, and see eight or ten crow blackbirds together. 

P. M. —To Lee’s Cliff. 

C. says he saw upland plover two or three nights ago. The sweet-gale begins to leaf. 

I perceive the fragrance of the Salix alba, now in bloom, more than an eighth of a mile distant. They now adorn the causeways with their yellow blossoms and resound with the hum of bumblebees, etc., etc. I have found half a dozen robins’ nests with eggs already, —one in an elm, two in a Salix alba, one in a Salix nigra, one in a pitch pine, etc., etc. 

I find the partridge-nest of the 7th partially covered with dry oak leaves, and two more eggs only, three in all, cold. Probably the bird is killed.

As I approach the owl’s nest, I see her run past the hole up into that part of the hollow above it, and probably she was there when I thought she had flown on the 7th. I look in, and at first did not know what I saw. One of the three remaining eggs was hatched, and a little downy white young one, two or three times as long as an egg, lay helpless between the two remaining eggs. Also a dead white-bellied mouse (Mus leucopus) lay with them, its tail curled round one of the eggs. 

Wilson says of his red owl (Strix asio), — with which this apparently corresponds, and not with the mottled, though my egg is not “pure white,” —that “the young are at first covered with a whitish down.”

Hear an oven-bird. 

Passing on into the Miles meadow, am struck by the interesting tender green of the just springing foliage of the aspens, apples, cherries (more reddish), etc. It is now especially interesting while you can see through it, and also the tender yellowish-green grass shooting up in the bare river meadows and prevailing over the dark and sere.

Watch a black and white creeper from Bittern Cliff, a very neat and active bird, exploring the limbs on all sides and looking three or four ways almost at once for insects. Now and then it raises its head a little, opens its bill, and, without closing it, utters its faint seeser seeser seeser. 

From beyond the orchard see a large bird far over the Cliff Hill, which, with my glass, I soon make out to be a fish hawk advancing. Even at that distance, half a mile off, I distinguish its gull-like body, — pirate-like fishing body fit to dive, — and that its wings do not curve upward at the ends like a hen-hawk’s (at least I could not see that they did), but rather hang down. It comes on steadily, bent on fishing, with long and heavy undulating wings, with an easy, sauntering flight, over the river to the pond, and hovers over Pleasant Meadow a long time, hovering from time to time in one spot, when more than a hundred feet high, then making a very short circle or two and hovering again, then sauntering off against the wood side. At length he reappears, passes downward over the shrub oak plain and alights on an oak (of course now bare), standing this time apparently length wise on the limb. 

Soon takes to wing again and goes to fishing down the stream a hundred feet high. When just below Bittern Cliff, I observe by its motions that it observes something. It makes a broad circle of observation in its course, lowering itself somewhat; then, by one or two steep sidewise flights, it reaches the water, and, as near as intervening trees would let me see, skims over it and endeavored to clutch its prey in passing. It fails the first time, but probably succeeds the second. Then it leisurely wings its way to a tall bare tree on the east end of the Cliffs, and there we leave it apparently pluming itself. 

It had a very white belly, and indeed appeared all white be neath its body. I saw broad black lines between the white crown and throat. 

The brown thrasher is a powerful singer; he is a quarter of a mile off across the river, when he sounded within fifteen rods. 

Hear the night-warbler. 

Slippery elm leaf more forward than the common; say yesterday; only young common yet. White ash begins to shed pollen at Lee’s; yesterday, or possibly day before, but no leaves on the same. 

Hear the first creak of a cricket beneath the rocks there, so serene and composing. Methinks it surpasses the song of all birds; sings from everlasting to everlasting. 

Apparently a thousand little slender catchflies shooting up on the top of the cliff.

The red oak there leafed a day or two, or one day earlier than hickory, and the black near it not yet. Rhus radicans leafed there a day or two. 

See one white-throat sparrow still.  The hearing of the cricket whets my eyes. 

I see one or two long lighter and smoother streaks across the rippled pond from west to east, which preserve their form remarkably, only are bent somewhat at last. The zephyr does not strike the surface from over the broad button-bush row till after a rod or so, leaving a perfectly smooth border, with a fine, irregular shaded edge where the rippling begins.

I now begin to distinguish where at a distance the Amelanchier Botryapium, with its white against the russet, is waving in the wind. 

Under Lee’s Cliff, about one rod east of the ash, am surprised to find some pale-yellow columbines, — not a tinge of scarlet, —the leaves and stem also not purplish, but a yellowish and light green, with leaves differently shaped from the common, the parts, both flower and leaves, more slender, and the leaves not so flat, but inclining to fold. 

One flower of the Polygonatum pubescens open there; probably may shed pollen to-morrow.

Returning over Conantum, I direct my glass toward the dead tree on Cliffs, and am surprised to see the fish hawk still sitting there, about an hour after he first alighted; and now I find that he is eating a fish, which he had under his feet on the limb and ate as I have already described. At this distance his whole head looked white with his breast. 

Just before sundown, we take our seats before the owl’s nest and sit perfectly still and await her appearance. We sit about half an hour, and it is surprising what various distinct sounds we hear there deep in the wood, as if the aisles of the wood were so many ear trumpets,-- the cawing of crows, the peeping of hylas in the swamp and perhaps the croaking of a tree-toad, the oven-bird, the yorrick of Wilson’s thrush, a distant stake-driver, the night-warbler and black and white creeper, the lowing of cows, the late supper horn, the voices of boys, the singing of girls, -- not all together but separately, distinctly, and musically, from where the partridge and the red-tailed hawk and the screech owl sit on their nests.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 12, 1855

Cold enough for a fire this many a day. See May 21, 1855 ( “[C]old weather, indeed, from the 20th to 23d inclusive. Sit by fires, and sometimes wear a greatcoat and expect frosts.”);  May 21, 1860 (“Cold, at 11 A.M. 50°; and sit by a fire”; May 22, 1860 (Another cold and wet day, requiring fire.”)

Under Lee’s Cliff, . . . am surprised to find some pale-yellow columbines . . .  See  March 18,1853 (" At Conantum Cliff the columbines have started and the saxifrage even,. . .Both these grow there in high and dry chinks in the face of tire cliff, where no soil appears, and the sunnier the exposure the more advanced."); April 27, 1852 ("[The early saxifrage] can take advantage of a perpendicular cliff where the snow cannot lie and fronting the south. In exactly the same places grows the columbine, now well budded and seven or eight inches high. The higher up the rock and the more sheltered and sunny the location, the earlier they are.") April 30, 1855 (" Columbine just out; one anther sheds."); May 1, 1854 ("I think that the columbine cannot be said to have blossomed there [Lee's Cliff] before to-day, — the very earliest."); May 6, 1852(" The first columbine (Aquilegia Canadensis) to-day, on Conantum."); May 16, 1852 ("Methinks the columbine here is more remarkable for growing out of the seams of the rocks than the saxifrage, and perhaps better deserves the latter name.[ Latin, saxifragus breaking rocks, from saxum rock + frangere to break] It is now in its prime, ornamental for nature's rockwork. It is a beautiful sight to see large clusters of splendid scarlet and yellow flowers growing out of a seam in the side of this gray cliff.”)

The night-warbler. See May 12, 1857 ("A night-warbler, plainly light beneath. It always flies to a new perch immediately after its song");.According to Emerson, the night warbler was "a bird he had never identified, had been in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush.” See also May 17, 1858 ("Just after hearing my night-warbler I see two birds on a tree. ...[One perhaps golden-crowned thrush. ]”); May 19, 1858 (“Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird! I have noticed that when it drops down into the woods it darts suddenly one side to a perch when low."); May 28, 1854 ("The night-warbler, after his strain, drops down almost perpendicularly into a tree-top and is lost.”) 

Sounds of the deep wood

where red-tailed hawk partridge and

owl sit on their nests. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sounds of the deep woods at sunset.

                                     A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025